Venture Forum Grades Pitches
A green tech firm and a data storage company won the WPI Venture Forum's annual elevator pitch contest held Tuesday night.
The judging panel selected Shorepower of Portland, Ore., as its winner, while the audience picked ColdStor Data of Walpole, N.H.
Shorepower designs, manufactures and distributes simple, cost-effective infrastructure solutions to connect trucks and cars to the electrical grid.
The company was started in 2005, has nine employees and is seeking $1 million to hire more people and to match government grant funds for construction of new power locations with its "electrified parking spaces." Joseph Licari represented the company.
ColdStor Data offers online digital data archive services. It has developed a patent-pending technology that can store archived data at a 70 percent cost savings to current solutions while guaranteeing the data integrity. Joel Love presented the company's plans.
It has eight employees and is seeking $6.5 million in funding to complete the development and release of its software, as well as for sales and general purposes.
Twenty-eight companies applied to participate in the contest and 10 were chosen to deliver their pitches. There are always two winners: one chosen by judges that comes with a $2,500 prize and a second chosen by the audience that comes with a $500 prize.
The judges rated each business on its business model, innovation, market opportunity, leadership team as well as its presentation.
The judges were Justin Aborn, CTO and chief scientist of General Compression Inc.; Robert J. Crowley, president of Massachusetts Technology Development Corp.; Laura Ring, vice president of strategic relations at Castile Ventures; Patrick R.H. Waller of Wolf Greenfield PC and W. Lambert Welling, managing director at MedTech Capital Inc.
WBJ Web Partners
Most Recent
Most Recent
0 Comments